


Whisper Softly into the Southerly Wind

by Yoko_Fujioka



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Feudal Japan, M/M, Period Piece, Tengu!AU, because i am so out of ideas wOW, i also use quotes that i am pretty sure are younger than this fic, i am going to need ideas from the readers, incredibly historically innacurate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4090483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoko_Fujioka/pseuds/Yoko_Fujioka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kazunari is a curious young tengu who has a weird obsession with watching the strange creatures called humans starting to migrate towards the river near where he lives.</p><p>Shintarō is a human doctor, fixated entirely on saving lives and helping others, and has a despise of yōkai so deep but unfounded that even Kazunari cannot forgive him. </p><p>These two young men are on opposite sides of a gorge so wide, it seemed like even a friendship between them would be impossible, so for them to fall in love?</p><p>There's absolutely no way.</p><p>Supposed to be a prequel to "the power to overcome time" it kinda got out of hand but I'll make it wrap around full circle at some point, I swear XD</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whisper Softly into the Southerly Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qwaszxedc9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwaszxedc9/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Power to Overcome Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235725) by [Sylindara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylindara/pseuds/Sylindara). 



> Whelp in part 1,946,569,823 of "yoko is a complete ass", I wrote a review on "The Power to Overcome Time" back in March of last year, apparently got really inspired by the ideas I had, and wrote furiously for the last few months of school in my animal behaviors/study hall notebook (I was a senior, so almost all of my classes were laid-back electives where there wasn't much to do XDD). 
> 
> I had wanted to make it a longer, more exciting first chapter, so I left it at about this point for like nine months until I re-remembered I had even written it in the first place and then left it for another few months just because I couldn't figure out how to end it. 
> 
> Funnily enough, I then re-read http://archiveofourown.org/works/1605494/chapters/3417659 by qwaszxedc9 and knew exactly how I wanted to do it!!
> 
> I'm suuuuper sorry for the wait, and this isn't my best, but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> (what does that title even mean??? I don't even know and I wrote it!! //shot)

All the danger of watching such a “violent race of creatures” aside, Kazunari really did love observing humans because they were so interesting. The one thing about them that he could never really seem to wrap his head around, though, was the concept of time. It was a well-known, pretty much obvious fact that all yōkai live much, much longer than any human could ever hope to, but the young tengu had no idea how that related to the colored beads on the wooden frame that his grandfather called an “abacus”.

Again and again over the years he had asked his grandfather to explain it to him, but the old man had a habit of rambling paired with a low, soothing voice that almost always sent the younger ravenette in a deep sleep that essentially carried no hope of ever allowing any knowledge to pass through. Even when he forced himself to stay awake by constantly pinching himself or asked one of the other elders what they knew, they either had no idea themselves, some crazy idea that the youngster was fairly sure had absolutely no chance of being true, or just couldn’t manage to explain it in a way that made sense to him. Sure, maybe he was just dumb and lazy like his little sister liked to snidely imply, or maybe the humans were just crazy. That was one of the things he liked best about them, though, their strange quirks and habits. Their day-to-day lives, and even their priorities, were usually enough to send any smart tengu flying for the hills, but maybe he was just the right amount of stupid and plucky to get something positive from coming so close to them.

Just to prove that he wasn’t completely dumb, he decided to explain it to himself, setting up camp in a tall tree near a lone house on the riverside where a little girl had just planted a baby tree. He wasn’t usually the best at waiting for things, but his father had always told him “a watched pot never boils” so he decided to put a small amount of time between each visit. The first break had admittedly been longer than he intended, thanks to the kitsune Ryōta and a whole forest of adventures and yōkai to talk to, but when he got back he was literally floored, falling to the ground about as ungracefully as a creature that spends all its time in the air can. 

It couldn’t be the same person, the same family…but there it was, the small pink ribbon still tied in her hair, undoubtedly the one he had left her as a gift when he had first seen her. She couldn’t see him, of course, so there was no way she could have known, but he was glad she had accepted and continued to wear it, as that was one of the things he had briefly wondered about when he had left her last.

Getting back on track…it was unbelievable how much she had grown. Even the tree, still in its same place but now surrounded by siblings, was quite large, at least in comparison to the little sapling she had first planted. He could tell it was going to be majestic when it was fully grown and then as it grew older, the forever reaching branches floating ever farther from the ground as the trunk grew and stretched with each ring it bore to tell its story. 

The girl had siblings now, as well, and if Kazunari didn’t know better, he’d say that she would soon be bearing a child of her own. He stayed just a little while longer to watch the family one last time before he then flew away silently as Amaterasu sank lower and lower under the horizon. His experiment was an absolute failure, and he went home that day even more confused than he had been before he had set out to answer his burning question. 

One thing that he knew for sure about the humans, though, was that they almost always lived in bunches, almost like packs. When his grandfather had been young, the forest had been large and plentiful, with no humans around at all. Kazunari had seen a few humans, mostly lone families living on the riverbank like the little girl who had planted that tree, but lately the humans seemed to grow in number by the day. Not like extending families, but like people migrating from other parts to live in their forest. One house became five which became ten, twenty and then roofs as far as the eye could see. Not really of course, especially not when you could fly this high and had great eyesight, but it was a human saying Kazunari had heard once and that he liked enough to repeat.

Needless to say all the yōkai were furious about the influx, but it seemed obvious that they could do nothing more than concede to the ebb and flow of the human’s wills while working together to mend their broken homes, make new ones and decide what to do about the limitation of food and supplies. Some tried to scare the humans away, but while invisible to the all except the children, it was impossible to get their point across to anyone who mattered. Even the people who **were** scared by the apparently malevolent spirits angered about their shrine being destroyed just fixed it up and then had a Shinto priest come in, regaining the people’s trust and completely negating any further attempts by the yōkai to frighten them. 

Lazily flying over the village now nicknamed Zetsubō, or “despair” by all the defeated yōkai, Kazunari looked down as something caught his eye, slowing down without even thinking about when he noticed the huge crowd now gathered in front of one particular shack. Perhaps a little bit bigger than the norm, the shack was built with the same structure but had lots of decorations all over it that Kazunari had never seen before and looked anything but flame-resistant. Since he was already slowed down to the point where he was more levitating in the air than really flying, the black-haired boy slowed down his wing beat just the tiniest bit more so that he gently landed on the roof of the shack toes first, then leaning his body backwards so that the rest of his weight followed suit. Smiling to himself slightly at a small child’s cry of “look, mommy!” as she stared at him in awe, the tengu fluffed out his speckled brownish-grey wings one last time before folding them behind his back, curious blue-grey eyes scanning the area before him. 

At first glance, there didn’t seem to be any real explanation for why they had gathered; the shape they made was vaguely line-like and starting at the shack’s doorway, with most everyone standing up and talking to the people around them. There were a few exceptions, though, people who were sitting down against the wall, leaning onto the person nearest to them, or temporarily bending over to cough or sneeze. Everything kind of muddled together into a low buzz of white noise, and lying down on his side on the shack’s roof, Kazunari bent his arm at the elbow so that he could cradle his head down into his hand as he fell into a light sleep, lulled by the din around him.  
*  
Judging by the sky when he woke up, he had been out for quite a while, but the crowd didn’t seem to have shrunk in size at all. In fact, it might have even grown bigger, although he had only made a vague guestimate about how many people there had been before. The really surprising part, though, was that it seemed that even though there were so many people gathered, most if not all of them weren’t the same people who had been there before. 

Pulling a rice cracker out of the small pouch tied at his hip, Kazunari noticed that the gossipy old lady who had been there before he fell asleep was now gone, leaving the area a lot quieter without her presence. The villagers didn’t seem to like her very much, and Kazunari had to agree that he probably would have been unable to stand dealing with her on a daily basis, but while the novelty was still fresh it was interesting to hear her stories. She had a lot of time on her hands, it seemed, and spent most of that time spying on and bad-talking her neighbors; there was no way to tell whether her stories of cheating husbands and wives so despaired that they threw themselves and their children in the river to drown were true, but they were fun to listen to, at least if you took them as tall tales as opposed to absolute facts. The old lady even swore that one of the drowned children had come back to haunt the village as retribution for not stopping his mother from killing him and his siblings, but one of the younger men behind her just laughed and said that there was as much chance of that being true as there was of yōkai being real. All the men around him laughed as well at his words while the old woman steamed, yelling at them for disrespecting their elders and not listening to such an important warning. Finally an old man stepped in and calmed everyone down, putting that day’s drama to an end. 

‘This is why humans are so interesting to watch! I wonder if there really is a young child’s ghost here. It’s not like I exactly know anything about how to talk to them or anything, though’ Kazunari sighed, biting into his last rice cracker only to have it fall to the ground, instantly shattering into too many splinters to count as soon as the ravenette caught sight of the man now exiting the shack. 

His hair was a color Kazunari had never seen on a human before, bright green the shade of a meadow after a heavy spring storm. He was extremely tall as well, and when he turned to face the crowds in the tengu’s direction, his eyes were immediately transfixed to the peridot eyes that were, although so bright and cheerful in color, lidded with a dark seriousness that did not fit the taller man at all. His shoulders and general body language was very stiff and proper as well, and Kazunari imagined how much more attractive he would look if he loosened up. Maybe he could help a little with that! Being invisible made things a bit more difficult, but a practical joke or two, even a seemingly random one might make him laugh. Again Kazunari tried to imagine the green-haired man laughing, but the image was so off that the harder he tried, the more blurred and ludicrous the image became. On second thought, he seemed thought he seemed more like the type to dislike tricks, and get angry rather than happy. Perhaps that was all the more reason for him to try, though?

Looking back, he was surprised to see that nearly all the people were now heading home, the square quiet without the layers of chatter. A light breeze blew suddenly, moving both men’s bangs just slightly as they looked each other dead in the eye, and possibility that the greenette was looking at the sky and not him erased by the deep from and low, almost hoarse voice he directed towards him. 

“What are you doing here, you despicable creature? Here to kill again? Or just destroy our homes and livlihoods?” The green-haired man’s voice was absolutely dripping with disgust, and Kazunari felt so insulted that he immediately laughed, loudly and uproariously, making the man actually get in a defensive position, like he was expecting the ravenette to lash out and attack him. The mere idea made Kazunari laugh even more. 

“So, Mr-High-and-Mighty, what exactly makes you think you think you’re in the right? We were here first after all, and by moving here, eating tanuki and other yōkai like there was an unlimited supply of us and cutting down trees, what service are you doing us, huh? Even yōkai you haven’t directly killed are hurt by the lack of food and what you’ve been doing to our water, don’t you think we want you to leave just as much as you don’t want us to be here anymore? Leave, if it makes you so unhappy!” Kazunari burst out with all his pent up anger, everything he had ever thought or felt at those meeting he had attended with his grandparents, boring and depressing but also thrumming him with adrenaline and hatred. So many were suffering, more and more children were starving and a lot of them weren’t even able to be born in the first place because their mothers were so sick! Not even counting the children who lost their parents to the human’s wrath and were ultimately left to survive on their own, which they were almost never able to!

His shoulders heaving and his breath coming out in ragged, almost painful pants, Kazunari couldn’t take it anymore, the lack of any empathy in the greenette’s eyes or his tight-lipped frown, and he flew off in a huff, several feathers cascading behind. 

Perhaps humans really were just selfish beasts.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow that escalated quickly! XD
> 
> In the beginning they were going to have a relationship more like the general fanfiction headcannon; Shin-chan is annoyed by him, but doesn't really hate him, and Kazu loves annoying him. It was an overly romantic, sweet fic, admittedly because "tptot" made them seem pretty compatible and without too much strife. "tpatd" made more sense with the deep-routed hatred, though, so I went for a more tokyo ghoul type route. I'm still not really sure how I'm going to get them on friendly terms, but it's going to have to be some sort of realization of how hypocritical both sides are, and how they're going to have to work together to make them realize they need to live together, not apart. Kazu does have as much trauma with humans as Shin has with yōkai, though, just to clarify.
> 
> I have the ending planned but most of the ideas for the middle I do have are most likely going to be dumped either way, so I really need to brainstorm with you guys!! My tumblr is yokofujioka.tumblr.com, and my ask is always open, so please please please never feel shy about talking to me to brainstorm ideas for my fics or even your own, I come up with a lot more ideas than I can possibly do anything with! XDD
> 
> I also really appreciate comments on here, though, and I swear it makes me more excited and inspired than any amount of kudos or bookmarks ever could, so please take a little time!! <3


End file.
